Multimodal Signals and Communication

Multimodal signals involve the use of signal components from two or more sensory modalities. This chapter explains the existence and benefits of multimodal signals, including whether signal components provide the same information (redundancy), with each component acting as a back-ups to the other, or whether signal components each convey a different 'message'. It discusses the advantages that multimodal signals may provide, including effective signalling under noisy or variable signalling environments, and allowing receivers to extract several different aspects of information from the signal. It also outlines how researchers need to clarify key terminology and frameworks for understanding multimodal signalling.